Needless to say these ramblings are personal reflections and do not in any way represent official policy of the Fédération Protestante de France, my employer, nor of the churches I'm a minister of, the United Reformed Church and the Eglise Réformée de France.

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2011 is the year of...

2008 was the international year of languages, the international year of the potato and the year for the protection of the frog. 2009 is the international year of reconciliaiton, the international year of astronomy, the Calvin year, the St Paul year and no doubt much more besides. Enjoy it all.2010 was the UN year of biodiversity and the year of the 100th anniversary of the Edinburgh mission conference2011 is the international year of forests - protect the trees and plant some folks!

Tuesday, 5 January 2010

For morning prayer the chapel was warmer even as we trudged through crisp snow once more to get to work.We are praying through the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle for the countries of the gulf peninsula this week including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran and Iraq ...Today was the eve of epiphany, the last day of Christmas - even if tomorrow is traditionally 12th night. We lit candles on the Christmas wreath, we prayed and we listened to the second half of chapter 2 of John's gospel. The money changers being driven from the temple. I always think of MArk's gospel as being the one that really gets on with the story yet it struck me powerfully today that John gets to grips with even more in terms of who Christ in within two chapters. The glorious logos-celebrating poetry of the beginning moves on to John the Baptist's preaching, confessions of faith about the Messiah and Jesus choosing disciples and then turning of water into wine at Cana. And this followed directly by the shocking story of Christ making a whip and turning over the tables of the money lenders. No shepherds, wise men or angels, no baby in a manger nor pregnant young woman for the teller of John's gospel.Christ the logos of truth and light is confessed as the messiah, leads and chooses followers, humbly turns water into glorious wine (as a foretaste of the resurrection banquet) and becomes the prophetic logos incarnate sternly saying "you will not turn my father's house into a market place".On the last day of Christmas I realised once more that the Christmas story isn't about prettiness and niceness this is about God incarnate bening born amongst us to to transform us and the world.

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About Me

Jane

My name is Jane Stranz. I was born and brought up in Britain and am an ordained minister of the United Reformed Church, a small non-conformist church. For over 10 years I worked as a parish minister in the Eglise Réformée de France in Dunkerque, Chambéry and Ferney-Voltaire. Fom July 2002 to October 2011 I led the language service of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Currently I'm working on a two year mission on ecumenical relations, inter-religious dialogue and inter-cultural ministry with the Fédération Protestante de France based in Paris. It's going to be exciting and a steep learning curve. I'm married to Stephen Brown a journalist, researcher and theologian who works at Gobethics.net. Over the next two years we'll see how we manage a commuting marriage between Paris and Ferney Voltaire. Since 1999 I've been living with multiple sclerosis, sounds rather noble but really means I just live in denial and inject interferon b three times a week and count myself very lucky to live in a country with a great health care system.